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63d Congress | SENATE { ^^T'^T 
 
 lof Soon-inn I (. INO. 1»» 
 
 1st Session 
 
 DANIEL WEBSTER 
 
 AN ADDRESS 
 
 COMMEMORATING THE BIRTH OF DANIEL WEBSTER 
 
 AT HIS BIRTHPLACE AT FRANKLIN, N. H. 
 
 AUGUST 28, 1913 
 
 DELIVERED BY 
 
 HON. SAMUEL W. McCALL 
 
 '/ 
 
 PRESENTED BY MR. SMITH OF MICHIGAN 
 SEPTEMBER 29, 19\3. — Ordered to be printed 
 
 WASHINGTON 
 
 1913 
 
t3^ ^ 
 
 n. OF 0, 
 
 ■* 4 1913 
 
DANIEL WEBSTER. 
 
 [Address of Hon. Samuel W. McCallat the birthplace of Daniel Webster, at Franklin, N. H., Aug. 28, 1913.] 
 
 You do me an honor which woiikl more worthily be borne by a son 
 of New Hampshire when you ask me to speak to you on an occasion 
 especially commemorating the kinship between Daniel Webster and 
 this splendid little Commonwealth. She is the proud mother of 
 many great sons. In art, in letters, in oratory, in statesmanship, and 
 in whatever contributes to our civilization the Nation indeed owes 
 her a heavy debt. But I think I may say without disparagement of 
 the others that we meet to-day to do honor to the greatest of her 
 children. Proud as you are of Webster, you recognize that his fame 
 is no mere local concern of your own, but a precious possession of the 
 whole Nation. And you consecrate tliis place to-day as a national 
 shrine to which all Americans may come and have theu' patriotism 
 rekindled. 
 
 It is a very human trait that leads us to commemorate on all 
 suitable occasions the lives of great men. We celebrate their birth- 
 days. We look for the anniversaries of great happenings associated 
 with their fame and commemorate them. We seek out the spots 
 where they were born, the houses in which they lived, and we affec- 
 tionately mark them. And the Scotch, as if shrewdly to note the 
 event which makes reputations secure; celebrated the one hundredth 
 anniversary of the death of their great poet. It is a good trait, but it 
 would be a better one if men would not so often fail to show their 
 appreciation while the object of it still lived. It is a poor requital 
 that the loving homage of later generations can make for the cold 
 neglect which contemporaries have bestowed upon some man of 
 genius. 
 
 But among all the occasions of the character of which I have spoken 
 there is none that comes quite so closely to the heart or so vividly 
 brings the life of a great man before us again as that which we observe 
 to-day. It is more than an occasion based upon the calendar when 
 we strive for a brief moment to arrest the steady and resistless flight 
 of time. When we celebrate the birth we celebrate the dawning of 
 a fame. It may have been a birth under most unpromising sur- 
 roundings, shadowed by poverty and want. It may have been 
 upon a bleak hillsiile in some poor country, the boundaries of which 
 hold none too good opportunities even for its most favored children. 
 But it is given those who follow to see the end from the beginning 
 and not to be shut in by the doubt and darkness that envelop the 
 cradle. Thus it is that the CUiristian world takes its inspiration from 
 the manger at Betldehem. Thus it is that we seek out the little 
 huti where Lincoln was born as marking the spot where heaven 
 touched the earth and wrought a prodigy. And so to-day you bid 
 
 3 
 
4 DANIEL WEBSTER. 
 
 US come to the birthplace of Daniel Webster and to gather strength 
 from looking upon the same hills and fields and valle3^s that he first 
 looked upon on his coming into the world. Here and in the near 
 neighborhood he made his home until he came to manhood. Spread 
 out before you are the fields over which his young feet sped. Not far 
 away you may hear the plashing of the river and the singing of the 
 brooks where the old English sailor taught him to fish. Here were his 
 father and mother and his brother Zeke, between whom and himself 
 there was a comradeship which may serve forever as an example to 
 brothers. All these scenes were absorbed by his young spirit and 
 became a part of the fiber of his being. How our patriotism is 
 stirred as we consider the wonch'ous destiny that was wrought out 
 betw^een the first glimpse of the world taken upon this spot and the 
 last weary look out of the Marshfield windows. 
 
 It surely was not an unpropitious beginning of a career. Poverty 
 there was in plenty. But there was a certainty that hard work 
 would wring a living from the soil, and there were great stores of 
 health in the bracing air of these hills. Poverty of that sort is far 
 better than the luxury which pampers and clogs the child of for- 
 tune. It sets the mind and body at work and gives them the neces- 
 sary discipline of labor. It awakens the combative energies and 
 fosters self-reliance, independence, and fertility of invention. 
 
 There was a fitness in the time of his birth. It was almost coin- 
 cident with the birth of the Nation, with the infinite possibilities 
 that lay before it, and with its political mechanism still to be shaped 
 and developed so that it might serve the chief ends of government, 
 both in peace and war. And so his great work waited for his com- 
 ing. He learned the history of his country first hand, from a father 
 who had fought in two wars, had served under the eye of Wash- 
 ington, and borne an honorable part in winning our independence. 
 He was reared in a home that was pure and sweet. He could have 
 been brought up with no sturdier stock of men than those who 
 lived about him, and his contact wath them strengthened his native 
 equalities of self-reliance and courage. He was sent to two noble 
 institutions of his owai State, Exeter and Dartmouth, already strongly 
 established, and he was educated for the bar under happy auspices. 
 He must then be accounted fortunate in the beginnings of his life 
 and the early associations which clustered about him. He was 
 not, to use Burke's phrase, "rocked and dandled into a legislator," 
 but he was disciplined in a far better school for a youth of heroic 
 mold, and it maybe doubted whether any great man was ever better 
 born and nurtured to be a statesman. 
 
 To do him justice to-day, one has only to speak the general acclaim 
 of his countrymen. His life left no hard riddle. It did, indeed, end 
 in bitterness and sorrow. But no calumny could mar the brightness 
 of his day, and the half dozen decades that have rolled aw^ay since 
 Ms death show Mm to be one of the mountain sunnuits of our history. 
 In the swift movement of that time, how many of the lower levels 
 have sunk below^ the horizon? How quickly even o;reat men have 
 disappeared from the common view. But Webster glitters in the air. 
 He looms up even more grandly than he did a half century ago. 
 We can comprehend more clearly now the greatness of the work he 
 did and we can see that his fame is destined to increase with the 
 growth of the Nation he did so much to fasMon and to preserve. 
 
DANIEL WEBSTER. O 
 
 He had more than one iiiiiqiie distinction. For more than a quar- 
 ter of a century he was by general consent the leader of the bar of his 
 country. His superb argument in the Dartmouth College case, made 
 when he was 36 years old, set a new standard even in our highest 
 tribunal, and thence onward his services were sought in the most 
 important causes before the Supreme Court and especially in those 
 involving constitutional questions. He acquired a weight second 
 only to that of the court itself, and his opinion is cited to-day as high 
 authority. His argument in the Knapp trial, remarkable in its effect 
 upon those who heard it, will, in its published form, defy comparison 
 with any other argument ever made to a jury. If he had never 
 become distinfjuished in other fields, his preeminence at the bar 
 would insure him an enduring fame. 
 
 But his preeminence as a lawyer was the least of his great distinc- 
 tions. As an orator he attained a place alone among his own country- 
 men, and it is doubtful if he is surpassed by any orator who ever lived. 
 He will stand the dual test of the immediate effect and the permanent 
 value of what he said. He is preeminent judged by either test alone, 
 and judged by a combination of the two I do not know where his 
 rival may be found. The immediate effect of speech is of the first 
 importance in fixing the quaUty of an orator. The agitation of small 
 matter Avith great wit, the vehement displays of passion, wdll not make 
 a great orator, even if the listeners at the moment are strired to the 
 point of frenzy. On the other hand, we should not accord the rank 
 of a great oration to a hterary masterpiece delivered in a decorous 
 and drowsy fashion and leaving the audience in a condition for 
 slumber rather than action. Much as we should j^refer the literary 
 masterpiece to the empty declamation, the former would have failed 
 at the moment, just as the latter succeeded even if it had succeeded 
 also in cheapening a cause for the next day and all subsequent time. 
 A great speech must make a deep impression at the time of delivery. 
 It must also bear permanently the marks of real intellectual power. 
 Mere leaders of mobs can not take their place among the great orators, 
 however effective they may be at the moment. Neither passion nor 
 reason can bear the palm alone, but great speaking, as Macauley said, 
 must show a fusion of both. It is difficult to exaggerate in the imagi- 
 nation the immediate effect of the speaking of Webster when he was 
 fully aroused. George Tichnor, who was far from emotional, said of 
 the Plymouth speech, ''His manner carried me away completely — 
 it seems to me incredible — three or four times I thought my temples 
 would burst with the gush of blood." Opinions like this might easily 
 be multiplied concerning his other great speeches. His manner 
 kindled great crowds, as it did Tichnor. 
 
 We must take account of his physical endowment for speaking. 
 His voice ran the whole range, from the high penetrating tones to the 
 rich organ notes, and its power enabled him to address men in acres. 
 The majesty of his appearance lingers in his portraits and can be 
 seen in every kind of art which has perpetuated his features. He 
 had no need to pose, since the highest eft'ect he could hope to attain 
 could be no more impressive than the natural expression of himself. 
 The black eyes, big and brilliant, the massive and noble head, with 
 wide-arched brows, the strong and stately figure, the face looking as 
 if carved out of granite and yet speaking in every line, all gave the 
 idea of tremendous power. No other figure of his time was com- 
 
6 DANIEL WEBSTEK. 
 
 parable in the impression it made upon the general mind. He seemed 
 much larger than he was. William Lloyd Garrison, who differed 
 from him very widely, speaks of his "Atlantean massiveness" and 
 adds "his glance is a mingling of the sunshine and lightning of 
 heaven; his features are full of intellectual gi-eatness." To the same 
 effect, but more picturesque, were Sydney Smith's characterizations, 
 a "steam engine in trousers" and "a small cathedral all by himself." 
 Many similar opinions might be cited from C^arlisle, Hallam, Theodore 
 Parker, and other notable men upon both sides of the Atlantic. This 
 magnificent appearance was fully matched by the character of his 
 speech, and when he was deeply stirred and animated by a dramatic 
 talent, which was almost the greatest of his qualities, one <loes not 
 need to be told by his contemporaries that the efl'ect of his speaking 
 was astounding. 
 
 Fox's epigram upon Thurlow, that no man could be as great as he 
 looked, was often leveled at Webster. But when one regards the 
 high mark Webster sometimes reached in his speeches, one can 
 wonder whether any man could look as great as he was. The speeches 
 of his mature years show most strikingly the literary c^uahty and yet 
 they had no trace of the spoken essay. First and foremost and 
 throughout them all they were speeches, and showed none of the 
 tricks and pedantries of the Uterary art. His first object had come 
 to be to give suitable expression to his thought, and liis style became 
 simple and majestic because his thought was sim])le and majestic. 
 It was shaped by the multitude of occasions which he encountered 
 and mastered. He was never consciously constructing masterpieces 
 and painfully fashioning built-up periods for succeeding generations 
 to admire. If he made a great speech it was because a great occasion 
 demanded it. He never wasted his oratory or tried to speak better 
 than he could, but he naturally rose to the demand that was made 
 upon him. If the occasion was a commonplace one, he did it the 
 justice not to exaggerate it. If it was a very great one, he never feU 
 below it. Thus his swelling flow of speech moves on like a mighty 
 river seeking its level under the certain impulse of the law wliich 
 governs it, now spreading itself out in languid flow, now rising to 
 meet the obstructions in its path and rushing on, splendid and resist- 
 less, over every obstacle. 
 
 From the 18 volumes of his works that have been presers^ed one can 
 extract much that is not literature and never was intended to be 
 literature. He can find a good deal of diy reading. When lie was 
 writing his farmer about the plantmg of crops, or making a speech 
 upon a ceremonial occasion, he did not assume the g^and manner. 
 But from those volumes may be gleaned a great mass of genuine 
 literature, perhaps a greater mass than can be credited to any other 
 American, and some of it deserves to rank with the best prose in 
 the English tongue. But in judging it we must lemembcr that far 
 the greater part of it was in the form of s])eech, and he would have 
 fallen short of being the great orator he was had he subordinated 
 the orator to the essayist. Literary pyrotechnics were little to his 
 taste, neither would they have served his purpose, which was usually 
 the severe one of swaying the judgment while he banished the preju- 
 dice of those who heard him. Rarely did he permit himself to make 
 an appeal to prejudice, but he sought to influence the action of men 
 througli an appeal to reason. 
 
DANIEL WEBSTER. 7 
 
 The difference between a speech which is real literature of its kind 
 and a speech which is Hterature of another kind may be seen by read- 
 ing a great speech of Webster's by the side of one of Burke's. Take 
 the speech of the former, ambitiously called the "Constitution and the 
 Union," but which has made the 7th of March as famous as the 
 ides of the same month, and which will always be named from the 
 day on wdiich it was spoken. I am not now referrmg to the contro- 
 verted questions put in issue by that speech but to its form and 
 structure, and m form and structure, while it was not his greatest 
 speech, it was yet a very great one. It is simple, conversational, 
 and yet condensed in style, consecutive and reasoned from begmning 
 to end, rising naturally to heiglits of eloquence, and one can read 
 every word of it at a smgle sittmg and feel his interest uicrease to 
 the end. If the same severe test be applied to a speech of Burke's 
 of equal length one will find himself disposed to hurry over parts 
 of it. He will indeed become enraptured by magnificent outbursts 
 here and there but he will find it discursive, amplified wath the 
 completeness of a philosophical essay, and lacking the simplicity and 
 driving force necessary to command the attention in a speech. If 
 one could leap from peak to peak he would find Burke's speeches 
 delightful reading, but if he must toil pamfully across the inter- 
 vening ravines and valleys he may easily understand how it was that 
 that superb rhetorician and philosopher came to be called the dmner 
 bell of the House of Commons. 
 
 Tiie great debatmg speeches of Webster reflect the battle note. One 
 can appreciate the enormous difficulties upon him when he arose to 
 reply to Hayne and can understand the concern which w^as felt by 
 his iSTew England friends. As he proceeded we see these difficulties 
 vanish one by one until he has surmounted them all with ease. His 
 reply to the -personal attack upon himself was crushing in its effect. 
 Instead of wideum^ the sectional breach by the character of his 
 defense of New England he outshone his antagonist in the eloquence 
 with which he eulogized South Carolina and, tramplmg sectionalism 
 under his feet, he made his immortal plea for nationality and union. 
 Judged by its immediate effect, by its intrinsic quality and the 
 momentous influence it exerted upon the development of the Nation 
 it must be accorded the first place among all speeches of statesmen. 
 As a maker of history it takes rank with the great decisive battles of 
 the world. 
 
 As an intellectual product the reply to Hayne was at least equalled 
 by others of his speeches. When was there such another plea 
 made to a jury as that m the White murder trial? A great lawyer 
 once said to me that he placed this speech by the side of Macbeth. 
 It has the rapidity of motion, the dramatic fire, the passion, and the 
 command of the springs of human action which brmg to mind the 
 greatest of tragic wTitmgs. 
 
 He had the vision of the poet as w^ell as the grasp of the statesman. 
 There is uideed a vast richness of the sane imagination in such pas- 
 sages as that on the greatness of England, or in the speech at the 
 laymg of the corner stone of the Bunker Hill Monument of which he 
 said, "Let it rise, let it rise till it meet the sun in his coming. Let 
 the earliest light of the morning gild it and parting day linger and 
 play on its summit." There is no redundancy here. There is no 
 
8 DANIEL WEBSTER. 
 
 pretense, and there is the upward sweep as unerring, strong, and 
 darting as the flight of an eagle. 
 
 He never seemed to labor. He attamed his great heights easily 
 and without effort. When extravagance of expression was the rule 
 he practiced a severe restraint. He did not mdulge in the style of 
 oratory which spends superlatives upon trifles and leaves nothing 
 for the great emergencies of the State. Such an example was never 
 of greater moment than at a time when every economic difference is 
 exaggerated into a momentous issue, has lavished upon it all the 
 j)assionate declamation which should be reserved for thi'eatened 
 liberty, and when the cause of every self-seeking candidate is made 
 synonymous with the stability of our political and social structure. 
 His reason and imagination worked together and he sometimes ven- 
 tured on prophecies which were fulfilled with startlmg literalness. 
 Ten years before the Civil War, in speakmg at the laying of the corner 
 stone of the extension of the Capitol he addressed "the men of 
 western Virginia" and asked "Do you look for the current of the 
 Ohio to change and to brmg you and your commerce to the tide 
 waters of the eastern rivers ? What man in his senses can suppose 
 that you would remain part and parcel of Virgmia a month after 
 Virginia had ceased to be part and parcel of the United States ?" 
 Vuginia was declared to be out of the Union on May 23, 1861, and 
 the Legislature of West A^uginia was organized on July 2 of the same 
 year. 
 
 His hterary quaUty is shown not merely in speech, but in writings 
 which were never meant to be spoken. Mr. William Everett quotes 
 Samuel Rogers, whom he terms "a remarkably fastidious judge," as 
 saying he knew nothing in the English language so well written as 
 Webster's letter to Lord Ashburton upon the subject of impressment 
 of seamen. Whether tliis praise be too high or not, I do not know 
 where there can be found in English a state paper that is its equal 
 in dignified and restrained power and in weight of compact argu- 
 ment. It was followed by no treaty, but it put an end to the discus- 
 sion of a question which had been a disturbing one for more than half 
 a century and had brought about one war. Notliing remained to be 
 said upon the subject. 
 
 But great as were Webster's attainments as a lawyer, orator, and 
 master of Enghsh style, yet if we thought of him in a single relation 
 it would be as a statesman. Undoubtedly much was due to the 
 harmonious blending of all his great qualities, and the lawyer and the 
 orator were in large part responsible for the statesman. But he 
 possessed a peculiar quality of mind which made him right upon the 
 mightiest issue in our history, and he had that dignity and distinction 
 of character which ennobled every cause he touched and helped put 
 our Government upon a loftier plane. He was not merely the 
 greatest orator, but the most stately figure in the politics of his time. 
 He was national minded. Without seeking expansion through 
 imperialism and conquest, he inevitably took that view of his country 
 and its institutions compatible only with its unity and greatness. 
 There was an affinity between the aspirations of his nature and a 
 great and free country, and it is impossible to imagine him upon the 
 side of a national government with no real power and subject to the 
 discords and varying whims of a score of little sovereigns. 
 
DANIEL WEBSTEE. 9 
 
 Our political literature was full of support for nullification. Cal- 
 houn's belief in it had been strengtbenecl, if indeed he did not first 
 learn it, m New England itself. There was no State in which it 
 did not find lodgment and in some portions of the Union it was the 
 prevailing beUef. In the loose thinking of the day there seemed a 
 necessary connection between individual liberty and that exalted 
 notion of State sovereignty which made the Constitution a mere com- 
 pact and not the charter of a nation. Webster inevitably ranged 
 himself upon the side of nationality. He became its prophet. All 
 his splendid talents he devoted to its service. He spoke in the very 
 crisis of our history, when difficulties were apj^allmg, and when the 
 development of our institutions might easily have put nullification 
 in the ascendancy, and he spoke with an effect which was augmented 
 with the flight of time. It is not extravagant to say that liad it not 
 been for him we should not to-day be one Nation. Wliat more glo- 
 rious distinction than that could a statesman have ? 
 
 And then there is the calm dignity with which he bore himself. 
 If the statesman's calling shall ever be put upon the level of the auc- 
 tioneer's, as sometimes seems not unlikely, it will be only after the 
 influence of Webster's example shall have ceased. He had an m- 
 stinct for public service but he had high notions about the lengths 
 to which one should go to secure office. He weightily declared that 
 solicitation for high public office was inconsistent with personal 
 dignity and derogatory to the character of the institutions of the 
 country. He lived up to that declaration. He retired from the 
 House of Representatives and twice again from the Senate. He 
 resigned as Secretary of State to take up his law practice. He had 
 an ambition to be President but he destroyed his fairest chance of 
 winning the office when he was asked by a powerful body of men for a 
 pledge regarding appointments to office and he refused to make it. 
 ''It does not consist" he said, ''with my sense of duty to hold out 
 promises, particularly on the eve of a great election the results of 
 which are to aft'ect the higher interests of the country." 
 
 More than once his motives were assailed, but, exceptmg when he 
 turned upon one slanderer and annihilated hun, his only answer was 
 to elevate his office by the manner m which he carried hmiseK. He 
 had nothing in common with the small breed of clamorous politicians 
 who defame their own virtue by always vauntmg it. Durmg the 
 five years when he represented our Government before other nations 
 as Secretary of State he elevated his country in the eyes of the world. 
 If Carlisle was willing to back him "as a parliamentary Hercules 
 against the whole extant world," his matchless series of state papers, 
 from that on Impressment to the Hiilsemann letter, establishes his 
 equal preeminence in that field. 
 
 He believed profoundly m popular government, and his democracy 
 was bred in the bone. The Democrats were not democratic enough, 
 he once declared. They were aristocrats. He was opposed to the 
 caucus because it made "^^ great men little and little men great. The 
 true source of power is the people." The theme of his noble Greek 
 speech was against the theory that society should not have a part in 
 its own government. But he believed in a popular will worked out in 
 laws passed by representative assemblies, and was against anythmg 
 resemblmg autocracy. The contest of the ages, he once said, has 
 been to rescue liberty from the grasp of executive power. He 
 
10 DANIEL WEBSTER. 
 
 seemed the embodiment of the ideal of the Greek poet, ''The ordered 
 life and justice and the long, still grasp of law, not changing with the 
 strong man's pleasure." 
 
 I shall not reopen the controversy wdiich so long disturbed the 
 country over the 7th of March speech. If the making of the speech 
 is conceded to have been a mistake, one can find comfort in the 
 saymg of Mr. Thomas B. Reed that the man who never made a mis- 
 take never made anything. But I fancy that some of the worst 
 thmgs said about tiiat speech were said by those who never read it. 
 Whether or not the speech did much to avert disunion at that time, 
 it is, I believe, amply sufficient to fight its own battles. But from the 
 standpomt of his happiness it would have besn better far for him. if 
 his good angel had led him out of public life before he made it. It 
 set upon his track the cry of calumny as it has rarely followed any 
 man. Except as it embittered his last hours, how petty it all now 
 seems. With so much falsehood and so little truth, how secure and 
 impregnable it leaves his fame. 
 
 His faults were those of a great and lavish nature. If he some- 
 times forgot to pay his debts he often forgot to demand his own due. 
 They said he was reckless in expense. But instead of squandering 
 his substance at the gambfing table, according to the common vice 
 among the statesmen of his day, liis extravagance consisted in the 
 generous entertainment of friends, in choice herds of cattle, and in 
 the dissipation shown in cultivated fields. If he put Story under 
 tribute to serve him upon pubfic questions he himself would neglect 
 the Senate and the courts and for nights and days watch by the bed- 
 side of a sick boy. His faults did not touch the integrity of his public 
 character and were such as link him to our humanity. If he had 
 been impeccable, incapable to err, with no trace about him of our 
 human clay, a Titan in strength but with no touch of weakness, we 
 should be dedicating to-day the birthplace not of a man but of a god. 
 A superb flower of our race he w^as still a man and he is nearer to us 
 because he was a man. Product of this soil and these mountain 
 winds, of this sky, the sunshine of the summer and of the winter 
 snows, the hardships of the frontier, the swift-moving currents of his 
 country's life, the myriad accidents that envelop us all, we reverently 
 receive the gift and thank God to-day for Daniel Webster as he was. 
 We who meet here may speak for the millions of our countrymen 
 when we do this homage to his memory. We reverence the great 
 lawyer, the peerless orator, and the brilliant literary genius. But 
 most of all we honor the memory of the statesman who kindled the 
 spirit of nationality so that it burned into a flame, wiio broke through 
 the strong bonds of sectionalism and taught men to regard their 
 greater countr}", and whose splendid service in making his country 
 what she is and what she may hope to be has won for this son of New 
 Hampshire a lasting and priceless fame. 
 
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